Google Goes for Social with Google Talk Location and Friends Expansion in Reader

Google is really going after social media with two updates. First up, if you use Google Latitude, you can now automatically update your location on Google Talk. This is very reminiscent of social networking apps we’re seeing for mobile phones. Allow yourself to be found and chatted with – very trendy.

Next up, Google Reader is getting even friendlier by enabling profile boxes for commenters. In other words, say you’re checking out the comments on a friend’s shared item and you don’t know who someone who made a comment is. Mouse over the name and a box will pop up with their profile to give you a little info on them.

This week, both LinkedIn and Facebook are beefing up their paid social offerings in different ways, while Google seeks to cut off Adwords revenues for fake news sites. And might Google be favouring desktop over its own AMP in its upcoming mobile-first index?

Here we’ll take a look at the basic things you need to know in regards to search engine optimisation, a discipline that everyone in your organisation should at least be aware of, if not have a decent technical understanding.